Have you already come across the term Product when developing a Composite Application using Netweaver CE 7.20? It is an interesting concept which allows you to define a single entity that corresponds to your Composite Application. So far, a Composite Application was a bundle of Software Components (SCs) which you had to handle separately through the whole lifecycle of your Composite Application. Having the Product concept in place, it is possible to deal with your Composite Application as a single entity in the Developer Studio. The concept is tightly integrated into the Composite Designer which you maybe already have heard of.
I´m going to publish on a regular base several articles describing the concepts. The first part can be downloaded from here:
http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/index?rid=/library/uuid/90d150bd-ffc6-2d10-3ab5-9a158dc91bee
In the meantime, I published the second part of the series. You can continue reading the series here:
Continuing the explanation of the Product concepthttps://weblogs.sdn.sap.com/cs/junior/home/
But I don´t want to solely use this blog as advertisement for my articles. As an outlook to the second part I´m publishing some content of it in this blog. For everyone who is already using the Product concept in Composite Designer and is facing some issues, here are some common pitfalls and errors you can run into when working with a Product.
Issue 1
Q: I successfully ran through all the steps to create a Product remotely, but the Product looks a bit strange in the Composite Explorer. Only the Product name is listed, but no vendor in brackets. In early versions (< 7.20) the behavior is that no elements at all are shown in the Composite Designer.
A: This typically happens if the file “.description” in the Product Description DC of the Product Location SC is missing. It is created by the New Product Wizard and should be added automatically to the DTR activity. If for any reason the file was not added or it is not present in DTR for any other reason, other users who are importing the Product to their workspace, will encounter this symptom. The resolution for this issue is to manually checkin this file ex post.
Issue 2
Q: The New Product Wizard is displaying all Content SCs in the bottom table on the second wizard page. But one or more are not selected
A: This is due to the fact that there is a dependency from the Product SC to the Content SC defined in CMS (the track), but the same dependency is missing in SLD. This makes the wizard believe that the SC is not part of the Product, but only a regular SC to which the Product needs a build time dependency. You can resolve this issue by adding the mentioned dependency manually in SLD.
Issue 3
Q: When selecting the remote Development Configuration in the New Product Wizard, I´m getting the error message “Selected Development Configuration does not contain an empty and writable Product description SC”. I am not able to proceed.
A: This error can have actually two causes. First, it might be the case that the Product Definition in SLD is missing a SC assignment. It is mandatory to assign the Product Description SC there. Adding this will resolve the issue. Second, you will get this error message if someone else already executed the final step of Product creation using the New Product Wizard. This step can only be executed once. In this case, there is no need for you to create it again, but you can directly import the Product using the Import Product Wizard.
